• What even with linking on Imzy...? All my link-savvy-ness has evaporated, apparently...

  • The air was there. A bit stale, a bit too tepid, but there. The water was on the table, waiting to be poured. Food was either plentiful or easily reachable. And yet, it felt like there was nothing. A big black void. Today was a bad day. And instead of diminishing, the bad days kept appearing with bigger frequency, and tended to stay longer than before.

    She's not used to it. Not used to the absence of that voice. The absence of that body, that warmth. She tried to keep the memories fresh, she did. In so many different ways. So many. But the absence does not grow duller. It still cuts like a newly-bought knife.

    Everyone is helping her and, admittedly, she's helping herself the most. But these types of days just sneak upon her; they choke her.

    Now she understands the difference between alone and lonely so keenly and can't help but each morning wish she could still scoff at those who ever told her there was a difference.

    She knows now.

    She feels it every day, every week, every month. Every year. Not a lot of time has passed, she knows, but she also has doubts that it ever gets truly better.

    Easier? Yes, she could see how it would get easier with time. It did get easier after the first, the second, the third year.

    But better?

    No matter how happy she gets, whenever she returns to their apartment, it all falls apart again.

    She falls apart again.

    And yet, that last step is the hardest.

    Allowing herself to stop being lonely. To stop living in the past. Inside her own memories. Inside the apartment she has turned into a mausoleum. The mausoleum she's living in. Or attempting to.

    But whenever she thinks about leaving, her chest hurts, her heart starts beating wildly and she feels like the worst kind of person; a traitor. So she stays. She lives on. She works hard on getting better.

    And she prays that at some point she will allow herself to stop being lonely.

  • You're welcome :) I couldn't just keep this beautiful thing just to myself, now could I?